Innabuyog is giving space to a paper written by Cynthia Dacanay-Jaramillo, the Executive Director of Cordillera Women’s Education Action Research Center (CWEARC). — Ed

Introduction

Violence Against Women (VAW) in its different forms are gender-based abuses that target women in particular because of how they are viewed in society. It is one of the most palpable manifestations of women’s unequal status in relation to men in our society. Although VAW is usually perpetrated by males, it must be clear that VAW happens not because of the ridiculous belief that men are naturally violent and aggressive. The problem has its origin in our history, when the subjugation of women emerged in our society. It is systemic and deeply entrenched in the socio-cultural and political systems where both men and women accept the inequalities as realities of life.

Status of women in Pre-colonial Philippine

Pre-colonial Philippine records point to the fact that women enjoyed a high status in society prior to colonization except in areas in Mindanao where feudal-patriarchal values are already much ingrained. But in a major part of the Philippine archipelago, women played important roles that put them in a high social position. There were women priestesses (Manjajawaks, Babaylans and Catalonans) who held important rituals in communities as well as occupy political positions where they were warriors or village heads. Division of labour was based upon sex and age, but everyone played complementary and reciprocal roles which were spontaneous and natural. Each one performed tasks that complete the whole social cycle crucial for the survival of the communities. Sexual division of labor did not yet mean oppression of one by the other. Housework and agricultural production done collectively by women was as much valued as the hunting performed by males. Care for children was a collective responsibility. In traditional Ifugao society til recent past, community-sanctions against VAW were in place and these were community and not private affairs.

Spanish colonialist degraded women’s status

The feudal-patriarchal culture has been largely introduced by the Spanish colonialists in what has come to be established later as the Philippine nation. During this period, the ideal Filipina was Maria Clara – the meek, subservient, docile, weak, passive, defenseless, and vulnerable woman portrayed in Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere who doesn’t have a mind of her own and relies on men for protection and decisions. The Spaniards institutionalized the oppression of women through laws and religious teachings. Women cannot own properties nor attend school. Their roles were relegated into the sidelights to the home, serving her husband and taking care of his children that were not as valued anymore. Even as they continued to work in the fields as peasants, their role in production became invisible and unrecognized because the colonizers and landlords only accepted the work performed by the head of the households who were males. Spanish Friars demonized the Babaylans as the “monstrous feminine.” (evil enchantresses endowed with black magic powers). Babaylan women were slaughtered, their bodies mutilated and fed to the crocodiles.

American colonialist brought the commodification of women

When the Americans came to colonize the Philippines in the 1900’s, they introduced the public school education system. However, they instituted the bourgeois-decadent culture where the “liberated” woman became the ideal. The Filipina began aspiring to become the white American woman whose reason for being was to become beautiful and appealing to men. They were portrayed as such for them to be saleable and profitable in the market. American companies started to promote commercial products in the Philippines, where women were used in advertisements portrayed as sex objects, who were beautiful even without brains just like in beauty pageants, and where their bodies became commodities with a price – the more titillating, the better for the saleability of the product. Then came the US military bases in Olongapo and Clark, pursuant to the 1947 Military Bases Agreement. Women around the areas where the American bases operated were peddled like meat. Prostitution then became widespread where women were used for the entertainment, satisfaction and as stress-relievers of the American servicemen. # nordis.net